Charles Allem

When Manhattan-based interior designer Charles Allem went looking for a pied-à-terre in Miami Beach not long ago, he was after "a complete shutdown, a sanctuary of calm and rest," he says. He yearned for a kind of anti-New York, a place where all faxes and phone calls, and meetings and deadlines, would suddenly cease. "I wanted no computers, no electronics. I wanted to come here and switch off completely. I wanted to use one palette to create a serene environment."

After buying his 1,800- square-foot apartment, Allem attacked the interiors with a vengeance. He reconfigured the spaces and added limestone floors. "I tore everything out of it," he says, speaking in the cadences of his native South Africa. "I like to keep a sense of volume. I don't like clutter and excess." Now his residence is as liberatingly spare as the vista—all sea and sky—beyond its windows, which Allem describes as "a jetliner view of South Beach."

Conceived in a minimalist palette—pale gray, stark white—this interior draws its color from the changing light, including sunsets of unimaginable beauty, as it plays out during the day through floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I don't mind color in a large home, but in a smaller one, I stick to one or two colors and change the textures and that's that," says Allem.

The rooms seem as everchanging as the weather; blanched, they maximize the light. For Allem, such monochromaticity brings a welcome coherence. "I don't mind color in a large home, but in a smaller one, I stick to one or two colors and change the textures and that's that." The predominant shade he chose here is, in effect, no color at all. "I've always loved white. I find it has such a brilliance to it."

In the living room, he worked sparingly, setting a few design classics, such as a pair of Egg chairs by Arne Jacobsen (upholstered in white leather) and a soaring Serge Mouille floor lamp, at a distance from each other. A constellation of recessed lights minimizes the need for table lamps. In such spare surroundings, even small objects, such as the vintage porcelain vase—dotted with tiny holes—set on the stainless-steel low table, achieve a rare prominence.

"I think editing today is so important," Allem explains. "We're living with a deluge of design. Everybody is designing something. Do we need another chair on the market? Really not. It's important to edit."

He applied this vision with a rare consistency from one room to the next. One corner of the master bedroom sums up the residence's strict lexicon. There, a striking tufted white leather headboard (of Allem's own design) is next to a cantilevered bedside shelf—made of gray limestone, like the floors. A rectangular lamp, illuminating this nearly color-free scene, is just one of several Lucite pieces found throughout.

For Allem, such sparseness is a liberation: "Without anything to focus on, the mind is free," he says.

Working for himself, he was able to take risks few clients would have countenanced. Inevitably, he omitted some things that others might treasure. "I try not to have books in my house," he says, by way of example, "because then I work." When he first moved to South Beach, not working was very much part of his plan. But then real life intervened. He recently opened a Miami design studio. Now his apartment is "no longer a holiday flat." Rather, "it's my sanctuary, the place where I recharge."

Spending time there resembles a trip into a sensory-deprivation chamber—so empty yet so full. From the moment you arrive, "your whole body language shifts and changes," Allem says. For some, he adds, it takes a while to adjust: "Visitors just flip out." But for this designer, the minimalism is a welcome relief. As he puts it, paradoxically: "The simplicity of virtually nothing is everything."

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